Getting some help

Like a lot of girls, I am convinced my dad hung the moon in the sky.  In my eyes, there really is nothing he can't do.  On my wedding day, I made it through the entire ceremony without shedding a tear.  No one, including me, thought I could get through it without crying, but I did.  Then we got to the reception and I proudly walked in with my new husband and danced our first dance as husband and wife, without crying at all.  Then I heard the opening line to Heartland's "I Loved Her First" and my dad wrapped me up for our father-daughter dance.  And let me tell you...SOB CITY.  After all, a girl's first true love is her daddy.  Anyway-the reason I tell you this is because when we first started planning our renovations, I found myself constantly saying, "Oh dad can do that!"  We need to plumb the entire house?  Oh, dad can do that!  We need a ton of new sheetrock hung?  Oh dad can do that!  My dad was COMPLETELY willing (and excited) to help, but his list quickly turned into something that no 1 man could possibly get done in any reasonable amount of time.  So, we had to hire a few different people to help out.  Can I just go ahead and say plumbing is a nightmare??  Especially plumbing a house built in the 1800s!!  Yes, we had 2 working toilets and a sink when we bought the house, but we tore everything out of the bathrooms to redo them.  The pipes were old and really needed updating, and we were moving the bathrooms to completely different places than they were before!  It took 4 different plumbing companies and months upon months before we finally found a good plumber and got the job done!  And our plumbing budget??  Out the window.  Again, I say, plumbing is a nightmare.

We also hired framers, electricians, sheet rockers, a trim carpenter to build the new steps and banister, and people to lay our new hard wood.  But that's another story for another day....

I mentioned before how scary our upstairs was when we first moved in.  It took me several weeks before I would even go up there.  When I finally did, I saw a huge open, very unfinished space with a bunch of old stuff stored up there.  I don't think the previous owner really used the upstairs.  On one side, there was an old baby crib with torn up sheet music in it.  Ben and I want to have more kids still, so we knew we would need that upstairs space as bedrooms!  We even managed to figure out how to get a pretty good sized bathroom up there!  So far it has only been framed, but man it has come a long way!  It's hard to take pictures up there because we don't have electric run up there yet, so it stays pretty dark.  Unfortunately, I was too freaked out to take any before pictures!  Haha...I do have a couple pictures to share though, simply because I know no one will believe me unless I show proof.  There are TREE TRUNKS holding up our roof!!!

Obviously, the new wood is where our framers added some support!  This is what our upstairs looks like today. Well, minus about 7483023909409 boxes of junk stuff I don't know what to do with sentimental items.

One of the bedrooms.  Pretty good size for a kid's bedroom, right?!

The other bedroom

Future hall bath 

We are eager to get the upstairs done mainly because it's the last huge project we have in the house.  However, since I am just now brave enough to go up there myself, I'm pretty sure my 2 year old won't be needing a bedroom up there anytime soon.  So it will happen when it happens!